GADFLY

A friend offered me a starter from her Amish Friendship Bread mix.  It is a zip-lock bag of batter to which you add milk, flour and sugar periodically over a 10 day cycle to feed the yeast and then divide the batter to give out to friends.  The last bit of batter you keep and use to bake the bread.  The recipe of items to add includes flour, bicarb soda, baking powder, etc, etc and 2 boxes of instant vanilla pudding! 

 The whole process has been likened (by my gifting friend) to a very guilt laden chain letter.  In my family we are thinking it is more like stone soup - with the bread starter being the stone.  In fact I was so convinced that the range of ingredients could stand alone without the starter I thought I might try it.  But because I am lazy as well as cynical I thought I would have a look on the internet first.  Some bloggers thought the addition of baking soda and bicarb would actually negate the function of the starter .. and one like-minded soul had actually used a cup of butter milk instead of the starter and found the end result moister and more delicious.  And to its credit, Buttermilk needs none of the daily mixing and intermittent adding of ingredients that its Amish counterpart does.

Final verdict - Amish Friendship Bread - high maintenance, troublesome and ultimately unfulfilling!

PS - will post a final update when I finally bake it!!

Apologies to all dental hygienists and the like but this little anecdote begins at the dentist’s – and while I am a rational being and able to credit my dentist(s) over the years with many painless and successful procedures there is certainly still a shred or two of the terror I remember feeling as a child, brushing my teeth in the gutter after a school pick-up with my mum assuring me that all those fillings and extractions were hurting her more than they were hurting me! 

So when my lovely Perth dentist recommended I have an errant wisdom tooth out I didn’t so much balk as procrastinate (for five years!).  I couldn’t have it out now, I was pregnant, then breastfeeding, then pregnant again, and far too busy to spend any time recuperating from what I’d heard was a torturous procedure.  At least those were the recounts I’d chosen to take to heart.  And I wouldn’t have any problems with the tooth next to the angled wisdom, because I would be the one patient that would religiously clean that tricky gap. 

Fast forward a few years and the torment (quite small really!) of the wisdom tooth extraction has paled in relation to the dramas of that poorly cared for tooth next door.  First an enormous filling (“Could go root canal – 50/50 chance” grinned the dentist), then a split down the root and a cemented band, much pain, antibiotics and then … blissfully …. nothing.

Maybe it’s died I said hopefully – and I won’t need to have it out (pleading).  The dentist gave in and said it could stay and be monitored.

Well now I wish I’d listened to all of the advice;

“Have that wisdom out or you’ll end up losing the tooth next to it”

“Get it out now, it won’t be a big deal”

“Probably best to just extract it”

“Let me know if it gives you any trouble at all”

Goodness, why would I do that when you would surely immediately suggest a DENTAL PROCEDURE??!!

Well now I have pain, an abscess according to the doctor, something terribly wrong with my ears and balance.  And for some reason my lovely dentist is not returning my calls!

The moral of the story … frankly I have no idea but I think it might start with the word “should” and my friends always told me not to should myself.  Hopefully I have learnt something from all of this, and perhaps I’ll work it out if the dentist ever calls me back!

How come I can have a silent number but not a silent door? 

I am rarely troubled by callers wishing me to subscribe to this or support that - although Trendwest is incredibly keen to offer me a lifetime of super holidays at a variety of timeshare resorts for slightly more than it would cost me to holiday yearly for a couple of decades.  But I am repeatedly harrassed after dark at my very own door by a variety of young men wielding a clipboard and a pleading expression and promising they are about to do me a very big favour.

 Just tonight a lovely young man from AGL interrupted dinner to let me know that I was lucky enough that my wonderful council (is it Whitehorse he asked) has allowed them to approach me directly and offer me a direct account with them where I wouldn’t be so unfortunate as to be overcharged and under rebated as he was suspicious was happening with my present company (whom he was unable to identify).  He asked me to present him with some recent bills for my gas and electricity (which I refused) and was quite hurt when I informed him that I did not have another five minutes to give him given that my two young children had now left the table and were hovering at the door with me.  When it was clear I was likely to let his offer for such a great deal slide he said he could quickly fill out a form for me in less than a minute. 

Surprised that I didn’t want to sign something at my door, in the dark, in the middle of dinner with no written information he asked me what I planned to do instead.  I informed him that I would look into my options and choose whichever provider I preferred - preferably green.  It is possible I added “that is my right!” petulantly.  To which he agreed.

 Previously I have had a less pleasant experience that involved a return of a salesman that I had politely rejected at 3pm back at my doorstep at 8.30pm.  I know that John Fayne ran a campaign against telemarketers last year - but to me this is more invasive, annoying and in one case vaguely threatening.  These people are at my door, know where I live, what I look like and are talking to my kids.  At least on the phone you can just hang up!!